The Bowdoin Orient

Though a study abroad program at the University of Cape Town in South Africa is run through the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) and is included on the Office of Off-Campus Study (OCS) program options list, OCS recommended that students study abroad elsewhere for the fall 2017 semester. While OCS did not officially bar students from going, students said that the office’s strong words discouraged them from signing up.

During the past two fall semesters, the University of Cape Town has been rocked by student protests against the proposed national rise in tuition costs. The protests disrupted classes and delayed exams for weeks. In some cases, universities were shut down entirely, including the University of Cape Town. Such shutdowns pose serious issues for foreign students.

“[It] is an issue of jeopardizing credit transfer and making sure students can graduate on time and have an academic experience that does involve some academic content,” said Director of Off-Campus Study and International Programs Christine Wintersteen.

Although Bowdoin students have attended the program over the past two years, they have encountered complications, which led OCS to recommend students avoid the program this fall.

“There’s something about having that experience sprung on you when you’re already there and working really hard to make sure that credit isn’t jeopardized, and that the student can complete the semester and stay on track for graduation. And there’s another thing knowing that the possibility is there pretty routinely and going into it knowingly,” said Wintersteen. “That feels a little bit more that the onus is on us to be responsible.”

Wintersteen said that if no strikes occur this coming fall, which is the end of the academic year in South Africa, then her office will likely support student participation in the program again.

Marina Henke ’19 saw the program on the OCS options list and was very interested in studying at the University of Cape Town next fall. After meeting with OCS she decided to go to Amsterdam instead.

“OCS made it very clear to me that there is a very high probability that if I were to go in the fall, which is the only semester that I was looking at, that classes would be disrupted and final exams may get a little bit hairy. I really wanted to avoid that, so I chose not to go,” Henke said.

Henke said that she wished that the OCS office had been more clear about the availability of the program, but found them to be very helpful in helping her find an alternative program that fit her goals for the semester.

Wintersteen said that students are still encouraged to consider the University of Cape Town program for the 2018 spring semester.

On Wednesday, a small group of students met with President Clayton Rose to present a petition with seven demands of the College in response to the policies of the Trump administration, particularly President Donald Trump’s January 27 immigration ban. Rose made it clear that the College is already meeting most, if not all, of the demands put forth by the students. The organizers have also planned a rally in the David Saul Smith Union today—which coincides with the Trustees meeting on campus—where they plan to speak more about the meeting and the demands of the petition.

The petition outlined a number of steps that the organizers wanted the administration to take, including providing pro bono immigration lawyers for students who may be impacted by the ban, guaranteeing full financial assistance to students who may lose federal aid and to students whose family financial support may be upended during Trump’s tenure and beyond. It also asks the College to advocate for citizenship for undocumented students and for the administration to be more transparent with the Bowdoin community about how it supports students and resists aspects of Trump’s policies.

As a follow-up to his meeting with the roughly 10 student organizers, Rose sent them an email that addressed each of the demands specifically and outlined how the College is already meeting them.

Regarding to the call for the College to provide pro bono legal immigration lawyers to students, Rose pointed to the letter that he wrote to the campus on January 30 in which he stated that the College had identified students “who may be in jeopardy because of these new laws” and has been providing them with legal assistance at no cost. Rose also indicated in the letter that students should reach out to staff in human resources if they felt as though they were in need of legal consultation. 

Regarding the organizers’ concerns about financial aid, Rose said in the email that the College fulfills the demonstrated need for all refugees, immigrants and international students with College resources and will annually replace lost federal aid for citizens and eligible non-citizens who may lose federal grant aid eligibility.

He also indicated that the College adjusts the aid granted to students if their family financial circumstances change. 

On the topic of the call for the College to advocate for citizenship for undocumented students, Rose said in the email that he has and will continue to advocate for these students. He cited the letter that he wrote to the Bowdoin community on November 22, 2016 when he praised the role that students who are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy and students who are undocumented play on college campuses across the country. In his email to the organizers he also pointed to a letter from February 2, 2017 sent to Trump that he signed along with the presidents of forty-seven other colleges and universities that urged the president to “rectify or rescind” the immigration ban.

Regarding the call for Rose to be more transparent with the Bowdoin community about how the College uses its power to support students, Rose pointed to the three messages that he has shared with campus since the election, writing that, “in each I have reinforced our values and discussed the actions we are taking to support members of our community.” 

“I think that for me the big message is that the College has been doing virtually everything that the students are concerned about and I share their concerns, which is why we’ve been doing them,” Rose said in a phone interview with the Orient. “The other point that I made to them is that I’ve been talking about these things since November when these issues first surfaced as being real ... We will continue to try to stay ahead of helping our community think about these problems [and have an effect on them].”

Rose also reiterated how he will choose to engage with issues like the immigration ban.

“In my January note to the campus I said that there are two criteria that I will use, not exclusively, but in general, [to] guide when and how I’m going to engage,” said Rose. “One is whether members of our community are in some, way, shape or form threatened and the other is whether the mission of the College—our intellectual and academic mission—is threatened.”

The student organizers said that the meeting with Rose was productive and that they are happy with many of the steps that the College has already taken to support students. However, they hope that the College is more clear about the steps that it is taking in response to policies like the immigration ban moving forward.

“I think when it comes to transparency that’s an overarching theme not just for this particular petition but also for a lot of things on campus where students don’t know of the resources—whether they exist or not—and that sort of creates … unnecessary difficulties for their time on campus,” said OSA Omoregie ’18, one of the petition organizers. “And that by informing [Rose] of these kinds of things it actually opens his eyes to [the fact that] there are a number of things where [the administration] think[s] that students know and [students] don’t and that [they] could just be more clear about that.”

The student organizers indicated that a greater level of communication and transparency from the College could help to alleviate worries of current students, such as for students who feel as though their immigration status might be at risk. They said that the impetus for the petition rested on anecdotes from students who were unsure of how the administration is supporting them.

“I think one of the most important things that came out of the meeting was the fact that there are pro bono lawyers that are offered to students here,” said Kiki Nakamura-Koyama ’17, another student who helped organization. “What we were initially worried about was that these lawyers were only accessible to the students who the administration had identified as vulnerable but now that President Rose has explicitly said that these pro bono lawyers are offered to students and students can access them by contacting different resource centers, I feel that the meeting was a success.”

Nakamura-Koyama said that a large part of why she helped organize the petition and set up the meeting with Rose was that the action being taken at and by other colleges made her feel as though Bowdoin’s response was lacking.

“I think that the transparency of other colleges made me personally feel like Bowdoin wasn’t doing enough,” said Nakamura-Koyama. “But in a way, by having this meeting it doesn’t necessarily make the College look bad. It’s actually making the College look really good because the students that signed the petition were able to show the administration that we think the administration is lacking in certain areas when in actuality they’re doing a lot more than we thought they were.”

The organizers of the petition also attended the Bowdoin Student Government meeting on Wednesday evening. They explained the goals of the petition and debriefed the meeting that they had with Rose, as well as gauged broader student support for the petition.

“It was clear that students were really supportive of the petition and wanted to find ways in which they could fill in those gaps or fill in the requests of the petition. I think if anything the Bowdoin Student Government showed what kind of school we go to,” said Nakamora-Koyama. “So even if the administration might not be willing to do something students are and students are trying to have the most impact that they can without the administration being involved.”

At the time the organizers met with Rose the petition had 308 signatures. As of Thursday night it had 322 signatures.

An older version of the petition had indicated that the signees would participate in a walk-out from classes should the demands go unmet. After students expressed concern over this particular tactic, the organizers decided to not pursue a walk-out and organized the rally in Smith Union instead. 

The organizers said that the fate of the petition will depend on what students say at the rally in Smith Union on Friday. 

“[The petition] depends on the student body’s response and if students see that President Rose still hasn’t done enough and there are ways in which he still hasn’t done enough then absolutely we would be there to stand with whoever thought that President Rose could do more and the reasons why because I feel like the College should always be pushed to be better,” said Nakamura-Koyama.

In the phone interview, Rose expressed his support for the rally.

“I think it’s great for students to come together to talk about the things they care deeply about and to try to figure out how to have some impact on the problem, and [if this meeting] will be helpful in some regard then I think that’s fantastic,” he said.

Rose said that the meetings with the Trustees will be going on during the rally and that he regretted that he probably would not be able to attend, but that the Trustees will likely discuss the immigration ban and the petition.

Charles E. “Chuck” Huntington, professor of biology emeritus and former director of the Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island, died on January 2, 2017, surrounded by his family. He was 97 years old.  

Huntington earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Yale University in 1942. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II and was released to inactive duty in 1946 as a lieutenant, at which point he returned to Yale, earning his doctorate in biology in 1952.

Huntington began teaching in the biology department at Bowdoin in 1953 after being introduced to the Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy by Ray Paynter ’47, a fellow graduate student at Yale.

“Chuck fell in love with the place,” said Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Natural Sciences Nat Wheelwright of Huntington’s relationship with Kent Island. “[When he started teaching at Bowdoin] he wandered out to Kent Island to figure out what to study, and there he found these small birds that are relatives of albatrosses called Leach’s storm petrels. They’re about the size of a robin, and they nest in burrows in the ground and so Chuck decided to essentially dedicate his life to learning about the biology of Leach’s storm petrels.” 

Huntington ended up studying Leach’s storm petrels for more than half a century. His work with the Leach’s storm petrel may be one of the most detailed and longest running studies of a single animal population in the field of biology. 

“He single-mindedly continued returning to Kent Island summer after summer and would reach into these holes, pull the birds out, put bands on them,” said Wheelwright. “If they already were banded, [he] would look into his records to see how old they were and who they had been mated with through their entire life, so it was a really detailed, long-term focused study of survival, reproduction, longevity in one population of birds.”

Wheelwright noted that Huntington continued to return to the island until only a few years ago when he became unable to do so because of his health. 

“He never lost his attachment to Kent Island,” Wheelwright said.

Huntington served as the director of the Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island for more than 30 years. 

“He was a very kind man,” said Wheelwright. “He would drop everything if somebody said there was an interesting bird to see in Freeport or Bangor.”

An out-of-control vehicle ran into multiple people in the parking lot of Watson Arena and crashed into the University of Southern Maine (USM) team bus after the Bowdoin men’s hockey game against USM on Tuesday. No Bowdoin students, faculty or staff were involved in the incident.

The incident occurred at 9:06 p.m. directly outside of the entrance to the arena. The car was operated by a 90 year-old man from Topsham who had attended the game. He reversed his vehicle, a Subaru Forrester, at a high speed from a handicap spot in an arc through the crosswalk, running into several people who were crossing the parking lot. The vehicle then crashed into the front of the USM bus, knocking the front bumper off. The bus was running, but unoccupied. The vehicle continued to move after hitting the bus and came to stop on the sidewalk in front of the arena. 

Brunswick police and an ambulance responded to the incident and were on the scene within minutes.

Only one person was hospitalized as a result of the incident—a 15 year-old girl from Georgetown, Maine. She was walking in the crosswalk with her parents when the vehicle ran into them, running over her leg and knocking her mother down. The girl was able to get up and walk away from the crosswalk but suffered a broken ankle and an injured knee. She was transported to Mid Coast Hospital by an ambulance and returned home that same night. 

“We’ve been in touch with the girl. She was released that evening and she’s doing fine,” said Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols.

A number of other people leaving the game were knocked down, either by the vehicle itself or in an effort to get out of the way, but no one else required hospitalization.

Nichols said that he is thankful that the injuries were not more serious.

“We were very fortunate in many ways here that there weren’t more serious injuries and the fact that the bus was parked where it was may have prevented that vehicle from going into the lobby area because it was kind of headed that direction,” Nichols said. “So the bus actually I think protected people.”

Two Bowdoin security officers were inside the lobby of the arena when the incident occurred. They heard the commotion and were on the scene within a few seconds. One of the officers immediately checked on an elderly woman who had fallen down while the other went to the vehicle and then to the 15 year-old girl. 

The doors of the vehicle were locked, but the officer was able to gain access and turn off the ignition after a few seconds. The airbags had been deployed, but the driver was unharmed.

“The man was stunned by what had occurred. He clearly didn’t know what had happened. But he was not seriously hurt,” Nichols said. 

An ambulance was parked right behind the USM bus when the incident occurred. The ambulance crew was inside the arena supplying medical treatment for a USM hockey player at the time, treating an illness that was unrelated to the incident and had precluded him from playing in the game. One member of this ambulance crew came out to check on the injured girl, but another ambulance was called and transported her to the hospital.

The USM bus was operable after the accident and was driven back to Portland that night. The Subaru sustained significant damage to the driver’s side where it collided with the bus. No other vehicles sustained any damage. 

The Brunswick Police Department is following up on the incident, but no charges have been filed. It is unclear what exactly caused the man to lose control of the vehicle.

On Wednesday, President Clayton Rose released the results of the Bowdoin Experiences and Attitudes about Relationships and Sex (B.E.A.R.S) survey in a campus-wide email. The survey asked Bowdoin students over the age of 18 about their “experiences with relationships, sexual misconduct, and sexual assault” and their opinions about how the College handles these situations. 

The College did not release raw data from the survey, instead issuing a summary of the results. According to the summary, 78 percent of students agree that Bowdoin would support the person making a report, but 14 percent feel the College would not ensure a fair process for the person accused of sexual assault. Slightly over nine percent of respondents (14.5 percent of women and 3.2 percent of men) reported sexual assault “involving completed or attempted penetration of the vagina or anus or oral sex involving physical force or threats of physical force; or the inability to consent because of being passed out, asleep, or incapacitated due to alcohol or drugs.” Four percent of respondents believe that sexual assault or misconduct doesn’t occur at all at Bowdoin. 

81 percent of enrolled students completed the survey. Although it is important to note that the survey is specific to Bowdoin, response rates of similar surveys—specifically the Association of American Universities Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct—administered at other schools are consistently lower.

The survey highlighted that the majority of sexual assaults occur during student’s first two years at Bowdoin. 50 percent reported that the assault took place during their first year at Bowdoin and 87 percent reported that it happened during their first or second year. 

The survey was created last year in a collaborative effort between the Office of Institutional Research, Analytics & Consulting, and Director of Gender Violence Prevention and Education Benje Douglas and others, along with student consultation from Ali Ragan ’16, Emma Patterson ’16, Marina Affo ’17, Amanda Spiller ’17 and Kendall Schutzer ’18. 

The survey drew upon previous surveys offered at other schools that have sought to gauge the campus climate of sexual violence, but was made to be specific for Bowdoin. 

“We pulled from the AAU [Association of American Universities] survey’s ideas, we pulled from the HEDS [Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium] survey’s ideas, which was a lot of smaller colleges, to come up with a very Bowdoin specific survey, but with concrete ideas that already had practice behind them,” said Spiller. 

The B.E.A.R.S survey also showed students’ hesitation to seek formal or trained help. While 97 percent of students who reported an incident told a friend, only 21 percent told someone at the Counseling Center and 16 percent told a member of Safe Space. Douglas and Associate Director of Gender Violence Prevention and Education & Director of Accommodations Lisa Peterson stressed their desire to close this gap. They are instituting new programs and education initiatives while emphasizing existing ones to train students if they are sought after by a friend.

The report also highlighted a fairly consistent disconnect between students’ belief of how to handle a sexual experience and students’ actual experiences: 96 percent of respondents agree that it is important to get consent before all sexual activity, but 14 percent of respondents believe that it is extremely or very likely that they will experience sexual assault or sexual misconduct while at Bowdoin.

“In my world almost 100 percent of the students that I see are sexually assaulted so that is my world. So no matter what numbers we saw, [it] would’ve been difficult to surprise me,” said Douglas. “That said, I think the things that I see that hearten me the most. I think our students really get consent on paper. I’d love to see that actualized a little bit more directly, but people are at least saying the right things in such a large number that that leads me to believe that people really do believe that it’s the right thing to say.”

The report of the survey identified sexual assault education and awareness among first years and sophomores in particular as a focus of programming going forward.

The Office of Gender Violence Prevention and Education has paired with the Athletic Department this year to invite first year athletes to small group breakfasts to talk about issues of sexual assault and consent. Douglas hopes to expand this initiative to all first years over the course of the year.

“We want it to be a healthy four years and I think one of the ways we can do that is focusing really intently on the first and second year,” said Douglas.

Douglas also noted that the statistics regarding first years and sophomores will help his office gauge the efficacy of its initiatives.

“More first year and second year focus is going to give us a better sense of what we’ve actually changed with our programming versus what just happens with other outside characteristics,” he said. 

“I’m continuing to hold smaller workshops that are ninety minutes for students that want to start to build their skills in supporting friends who might have experienced gender violence,” said Peterson.

“I think when we’re training people it is with the thought that they are a bridge to resources, so understanding that someone who is responding to someone who has disclosed experiencing violence … it’s not their role to be acting in a therapeutic capacity but its their role to know the best way to respond initially and to know the right resources to direct students to on campus.”

As of this year, members of Safe Space will meet with students on their assigned first-year floors for at least two hours each month to help connections with underclassmen.

 While much of the new programming has already taken effect, B.E.A.R.S highlighted a need to focus efforts to promote healthy relationships. Eighty-one percent of respondents said they are or had been in a romantic or sexual relationship at Bowdoin and of that group, 32 percent said they had stayed in a relationship because it was too hard to end.

“I think where the survey will continue to be useful in helping us inform our programming,” said Peterson. “I think the survey called attention to relationship violence that is occurring on campus and that we don’t currently have a lot of programming around, and so that can help us to direct efforts and make sure we’re addressing that.”

Although the survey helped shape curriculum, Douglas does not imagine B.E.A.R.S being offered every year.

“I think we need to figure out the best practices for campuses of our size to get the best possible data. We don’t want to go from an 81 percent response rate to a 42 percent,” said Douglas. “I think part of the reason why that could happen is if we do this yearly I think people will start to miss some of the importance of it.”

On Tuesday, Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) renewed its divestment efforts and began collecting signatures on a petition that asks the College “to permanently divest its endowment from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies over the next five years” with the hopes of submitting it to Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) for a referendum.

If the petition, accessible through Blink, receives signatures from at least 20 percent of the student body (around 360 students), BCA can submit it to BSG. Then, after a three week period, the referendum would open to the campus for voting. If more than one third of the student body votes in the referendum and two-thirds of the voting population votes in favor, BSG will submit the referendum to the Board of Trustees on behalf of the student body. As of press time, the petition has 70 signatures.

According to BCA member Jonah Watt ’18, the group has long focused on divestment as the main method of climate activism on campus.“Divestment has always been our tactic, with climate justice being our larger goal,” said Watt.

This is not the first time that BCA has petitioned for divestment. In 2013 and 2014 BCA collected signatures from students, and instead of delivering the petition to BSG, BCA submitted the signatures to former President Barry Mills, which resulted in the group presenting a proposal for divestment to the Board of Trustees.

Due to the relatively informal nature of the previous petition, there was a discrepancy between the number of signatures that BCA claimed it had when it was submitted to Mills and the actual number of valid signatures. Research into the petition revealed that there were a number of duplicate signatures, lowering the stated count of 1,000 to Mills to 825 valid signatures.

“Last time we petitioned, we petitioned across semesters and we petitioned students that had graduated, we petitioned across five class years. This time it’s only for students who are enrolled this semester,” said Watt.

This new petition gives BCA a chance to gauge on-campus student support for divestment.

“I think the referendum is a way for us to re-engage and re-educate and then get a very clear sense of where the student body stands and so that way we can have a greater sense of how we can leverage that support and who we need to be reaching out to and what education we need to be doing going forward,” Watt said.

BCA has been planning the petition for a referendum since the end of the summer. Watt cited this year’s negative returns on Bowdoin’s endowment—mentioned by President Rose in a recent email to the college—and Senior Vice President for Investments Paula Volent’s attribution of these negative returns to falling oil prices as affirmations of the petition’s timeliness.

Watt indicated that in addition to divestment symbolizing the moral urgency of confronting climate change, BCA also feels that divestment is a financially responsible course of action, citing the “plummeting” value of oil.

BCA hopes that submitting the petition for a referendum through BSG will bring awareness of divestment to current first years and sophomores, who may not be as exposed to the issue as upperclassmen.

According to Watt, BCA hopes that both the petition and referendum will draw the consideration of the Board of Trustees, which has historically been dismissive of the possibility of divestment.

“I don’t really expect an answer from the Board because we’ve never gotten an answer from them. We’ve met with them, we’ve presented to them, we’ve delivered petitions to them, we’ve held a sit-in and we’ve never gotten an answer,” said Watt.

“I think that the referendum could be a way to finally elicit a response from the Board, and hopefully a response that listens to the student body.”

Watt also hopes that the Board to Trustees will be more transparent about how Bowdoin invests its endowment. As of 2013, 1.4 percent of the College’s endowment was invested in fossil fuels. Watt believes that the number is likely lower now.

“Part of what we’ve been demanding for four years is greater transparency, greater conversation both with our Board of Trustees and with our fund managers,” said Watt.

There is no clear timeline for the petition itself at this point, as it can be left open until 20 percent of the student body signs it and BCA can wait to submit it for referendum indefinitely.

As the 2020 deadline for Bowdoin’s pledge to reach carbon neutrality approaches, the College is both reviewing its environmental policies and embarking on a publicity campaign for its sustainability efforts. 

A new website for Sustainable Bowdoin, the College’s initiative dedicated to environmental sustainability and its pledge to become carbon neutral by 2020, went live last Thursday.“It has an improved visual design, but it’s really more about content,” said Director of Digital and Social Media Holly Sherburne at last Friday’s quarterly meeting of the Sustainability Implementation Committee. 

New features include a timeline with significant events in Bowdoin’s pursuit of environmental sustainability and a narrative video explaining the carbon neutrality pledge.

The update comes as the College’s approach to the goal of carbon neutrality has seen significant changes in recent years. 

Most dramatically, beginning in Fiscal Year (FY) 2014, the College stopped buying credits to offset its energy use.

For the first few years of the pledge, which came in October 2009, the College purchased renewable energy certificates (RECs), which were intended to offset the environmental impact of non-renewable emissions from electricity on campus. 

Director of Finance and Campus Services Delwin Wilson said that 35 percent of the College’s electricity is “green” in accordance with Maine state law. When the College was buying RECs, he said, they were intended to offset the other 65 percent of the College’s electricity use. This amounted to offsetting around 12,000 kilowatt hours a year, with an annual cost of around $35,000.

While these offsets helped to lower the College’s net emissions, they were criticized by some who saw them as a shortcut or a symbolic gesture. A working group of students and faculty members convened and recommended that the College stop buying RECs. 

“People thought, while it’s symbolic to buy them, we’d be better off taking the money and investing it in the campus. So that’s what we’ve been doing,” said Katy Longley, vice president for finance and administration and treasurer. 

“We thought that it made sense to use it to reduce our own source emissions on campus before purchasing offsets,” Wilson added.

Bowdoin’s net emissions rose in FY 2014 as a result of the decision not to buy offsets, but  the College has succeeded in lowering its actual emissions since the pledge began.

According to the College’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Update for FY 2014, the College emitted 15,813 metric tons of greenhouse gas during FY 2014. This was a decrease of 17 percent from FY 2008, the baseline year the College uses to measure its progress on the carbon neutrality pledge. 

Bowdoin’s stated goal is to achieve at least a 28 percent reduction in emissions by 2020. After that, said Wilson and Longley, the College is likely to resume buying offsets. 

“In 2020, we’ll have to do some big thing to reach neutrality, so at that point we probably will have to buy some RECs in order to be totally carbon neutral,” said Longley. 

An analysis from the Portland-based Competitive Energy Services, which is working with Bowdoin on its sustainability measures, projects that the College will have to buy 12,760 tons of carbon dioxide offsets in 2020 to achieve carbon neutrality.

For now, though, the College is focused on other areas. A range of topics were discussed at last Friday’s meeting, including last summer’s solar installation at Sidney J. Watson Arena, part of the largest solar installation in the state of Maine. 

While the panels were covered with snow for much of the winter, consultants from Competitive Energy Services said that the panels have still been producing as much energy as they expected.

The committee also discussed rethinking heating in student dorms and ways to grow Sustainable Bowdoin’s presence on campus. With its new website, Sustainable Bowdoin is hoping to expand its visibility on campus and beyond. 

“We took a look at sustainability as a whole—what are the messages we want to share?” Sherburne said at last Friday’s meeting. 

On April 2, DeRay McKesson ’07 came to campus to discuss activism, his role in protests throughout the country and social media. Following his talk in Kresge, McKesson sat down for a Q&A with members of the Orient. The following has been lightly edited for clarity.

What’s been your path to activism?

I went on August 16 [to Ferguson] for the first time. I got in the car and drove nine hours and went there. I put on Facebook that I was going and hoped that someone would find me somewhere to crash and they did. The person I stayed with after the first few days was a Bowdoin alum—a Bowdoin classmate—which was really important. You know, at the beginning I had no friends in Missouri, I did not know anyone well but I started protesting and I tweeted as a way to process. I needed to make sense of it to myself and Twitter was a way for me to tell other people, but also really tell myself.

Marginalized people always face this issue of erasure, and erasure comes in two ways—one is that the story is never told, and the second is that it’s told by everyone but you, the marginalized person. And Twitter allowed us to tell a counter-narrative about what was happening in protest in real time, which was powerful. Over the last 200-plus days we’ve been able to both talk about protests nationally and also tell those local stories. We’ve been able to keep the narrative even when the mainstream media may not be focused on the work. We can maintain the story and we’ve found that to be powerful.

How has your time at Bowdoin influenced your current work, and your understanding of the common good?

The common good is this understanding that you are to use your privilege and your gifts for causes greater than you are. I understood that at Bowdoin, the privilege of that education and that experience. The question becomes, common for who? Who is this common for, what does that look like, how do you push that? I think that’s important. I believe the Offer of the College implies that it has to be received, and there’s a reciprocity to what an offer is. I juxtapose that to the American dream, which is forced on people. I appreciate the offer being situated as such; I think the content of the offer is powerful, but I think that the message that an offer itself serves is important.

What do you think effective activism should look like at a place like Bowdoin?

Good question. One thing that I talk about is this idea of the story. It’s important to tell the story of whatever it is that you’re fighting for, especially in the context of a world where you are just always bombarded with messages. How you tell a narrative of why this issue actually matters to people is important. I think at a place like Bowdoin, it is particularly difficult because there is a general level of comfort that can create distance from actionable issues, because it’s generally a good place. So to your question about what productive social activism looks like, I think that protest is always disruption, it’s always confrontation. The question is, how does that live in a place like this? I think that some of it can be physical, like with the die-ins and stuff. Because the student body here is so small, 40 students coming together here to do anything is a sizable part of campus. So it can be creating new community around issues and sort of forcing conversations about things. Because this is a college, it could also be bringing speakers who talk about certain things to educate people. It could be exhibits. I think about those body image things that I’m sure still happen—using art, using culture as a way to push people to think deeper and think differently about work can happen.

It is interesting to protest with privilege, because even the marginalized people here have a relative privilege. It is easy to be comfortable here no matter what; it’s a place where you need for nothing. That creates a different relationship with the issues that people really care about.

How did you turn something you were passionate about at Bowdoin into a career?

My career was fighting for kids—either as a teacher, in after-school, or as a district administrator—and those things were really important to me. I think that if anything my advice to people leaving college who want to do social justice work is to be really clear about who you’re fighting for, right? For me it was kids. Those are the people that I’m fighting for every day. One can become so addicted to the fight that they forget the cause. One can just be so excited about the sort of confrontation phase that they forget the issue, and I’d say to remember to be rooted in the issue. Be as close—and this is the proximity thing—be as close to the work that you want to do as possible. And know who you’re fighting for. So that was my thing. And now I’m fighting for them differently. I’m fighting for them to be alive, whereas before I was fighting for them to have this phenomenal education.

Can you talk a little bit about the Mapping Police Violence project? How did that idea come into being?

Our focus has been on telling the truth, figuring out different ways of telling the truth, and then making sure that the truth we tell always empowers people, and this is that. So it’s like, we’re going to build a map that shows what truly happened, we’re gonna cut the data for people in as many ways as we can, and this is the first compilation of those two databases—the killed by police and then the other one—that we mashed into one. And we’re trying to make sure that we continue to tell the truth and empower people, which is why it has that piece by police department. You can look at gender, age, race—those sort of things are really important.

We rolled out a couple things. Wetheprotesters.org rolled out the database for chants and pictures of signs and those sorts of things. We stopped doing the policy stuff—we put it on hiatus—but that was there, those policy papers. I think we’ll probably do some sort of reading club soon, with protesters from around the country.

It’s interesting. When we released it, one of the first criticisms we got was, why are there not white people? It’s interesting, this idea that white supremacy always centers whiteness.

You’ve talked about receiving a lot of abuse on Twitter and other platforms. Have you experimented with other platforms trying to find a way to avoid some of that? Do you think there are things that the people who develop these kinds of networks could do to stop that kind of thing from happening?

I’m committed to Twitter. I love Twitter. So no to other platforms, and the movement’s not really on Facebook. I do get trolls on Facebook, but really, people troll my mentions on Twitter. If you look at anything I’ve written, there are probably all these people who are fighting in my mentions who I never see, because I’ve blocked like 12,000 people. I think it comes with the territory a little bit. The death threats don’t—I think that’s a whole different ballgame—but I think Twitter has acknowledged that they need to be more aggressive dealing with harassment and abuse, and I think they are making the right strides, they’re just not there yet.

Somebody made a game, I don’t know if you guys saw it, but there’s a target practice game, and my face is one of the faces on it, so you click and shoot me. And when I reported it, Twitter was like, well, the link is somewhere else, so they won’t take it down. So that’s not helpful. So I think they’re working on it. It’s slow, but I’m committed to Twitter as a platform.

What’s next?

We’ll continue to figure out ways to tell the story. I think that there are all these things around community building that we can do. How do we bring together people in the digital space in a way that is still authentic? Because you often see the digital space as being inauthentic, and I think that we’ve seen the digital space be powerfully authentic. How do we find or create the tools that protesters around the country can use to support themselves? You can start a movement, you don’t need an organization. How do we make that easier for you? How do we continue to create those resource banks for people? This goes back to the idea that everyone has a role to play. We’ve been in a place where we have been focused on how do we tell the story, how do we tell the truth, and how do we use this truth to empower people.

Nicole Wetsman contributed to this report. 

This year Ladd House will not host its annual Inappropriate Party. Members of the House voted on the issue this past week, following discussions with the Office of Residential Life (ResLife).

After members of the ResLife office repeatedly brought up the potential for offensive attire and cultural appropriation associated with this particular party, the House decided to forgo the party altogether. 

They had planned to host the party next Saturday. Instead the house will be hosting the band SUN CLUB, brought to campus by WBOR. 

Casey Krause ’17, programming director for Ladd, said that Associate Dean of Students Affairs Meadow Davis and Director of the Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity Kate Stern—Ladd’s staff advisors—first brought up their concerns about the party when at a lunch with the House officers.

President of Ladd House Ernesto Garcia ’17 said that he met with ResLife and Associate Dean of Multicultural Student Programs Leana Amaez before the decision was made. 

Assistant Director of Residential Life Mariana Centeno ’14 attended a Ladd House meeting two weeks ago to ask the House about its plans for the party.

“ResLife wanted to make sure that the House understood and was able to clarify why they wanted to have the party if they were going to have it,” said Davis.

“We work pretty closely with Houses on any event that feels like it could be unsafe or for some reason could be unwelcoming or uninclusive,” Davis added.

According to Garcia, ResLife did not explicitly prohibit Ladd from throwing the party. 

“There was definitely some advice, some warning from ResLife that it could get bad,” he said.“ResLife was really clear with the types of things that we were dealing with and the changes in Bowdoin’s social climate, but made sure that it was the House’s decision because at the end of the day it’s not something that they would want to force one way or the other,” said Ladd House proctor Kate Powers ’17. 

“It’s just that they want the House to be thoughtful,” she added.

Davis said that she did not think of ResLife’s concerns about the party were related to Cracksgiving, the annual party hosted by the men’s lacrosse team. At this year’s party, 14 students dressed up as Native Americans and were displined for conduct unbecoming of Bowdoin students. 

According to Krause, after the initial advisor lunch meeting, the House was still prepared to host the party. After the meeting the House began to brainstorm ways in which it could try to prevent overly offensive costumes, but still host the Inappropriate Party. 

She said that they were considering such measures as conducting programming specifically geared towards educating the campus about cultural appropriation during the week leading up to the party or trying to determine what was too offensive to be worn into the House.

“We didn’t feel very confident with any of the compromises that we had come up with,” said Krause. “We didn’t feel confident that we could actually keep what we wanted to keep out of the Inappropriate Party out, and so we decided not to hold it.”

She pointed out that a large part of what eventually convinced the House to not hold the party was the offer from WBOR to host SUN CLUB that same weekend. WBOR approached Ladd with the offer.

Some members of Ladd have expressed regret at not being able to hold the party.

“A lot of people do enjoy the party and wanted to throw it, but it was going to take more meetings with the administration to go through ways to filter out the bad,” said Krause.Powers acknowledged that the Inappropriate Party is appealing to many students because it offers people the chance to be politically incorrect and goofy.

“A lot of people were able to reason by the end that that isn’t worth hurting someone,” Powers added.

Jun Choi ’15, who lived in Ladd two years ago, said that when he lived there the House didn’t worry about the potential for the party to be too offensive and that ResLife was not as involved in the issue as they were this year. He added that most Ladd alumni are not upset that the party is not happening this year.

“Most of us didn’t really care that much,” said Choi. 

“I think it is along the lines of Bowdoin being a little too [politically correct] and trying to police what you can and cannot say and can and cannot do on campus, which depending on who you are may be for the better or may be for the worse,” Choi added.

Garcia echoed that sentiment. 

“The Inappropriate Party is just one of the many things that are censored at Bowdoin and I wouldn’t say losing the Inappropriate Party itself is a bad thing for Bowdoin, but it does just kind of show how there are a lot of things on this campus that students cannot do because of political correctness,” he said. 

The permanent future of the Inappropriate Party at Bowdoin is uncertain at this point.

“If the House next year wanted to have the Inappropriate Party again, we would have a similar conversation with them,” said Davis.

Dartmouth College President Phil Hanlon announced a campus-wide ban of hard alcohol in a January 29 speech. The ban is set to take effect after March 30, when the school’s spring term begins.

As one of the few peer institutions in the country with a similar ban on hard alcohol, the announcement from Hanlon has particular relevance to the Bowdoin community. Bowdoin banned hard alcohol in 1996 when it was trying to create a safer campus drinking culture after years of alcohol-related incidents at its fraternities.

In recent years, Dartmouth has been wracked by controversies involving binge drinking. The decision is one part of a new social doctrine for Dartmouth that largely stems from a panel on campus life that Hanlon initiated nine months ago. 

Dartmouth now joins Bowdoin, Bates, Colby and several other colleges who have such a ban. The definition of hard alcohol can differ between schools, however. For example, Colby’s ban on hard alcohol only applies to drinks with over 40 percent alcohol by volume, while Dartmouth will define hard alcohol as any drink with over 15 percent alcohol by volume. Other colleges, including Swarthmore, Colgate and Stanford University, have instead banned hard alcohol in certain spaces and at certain events.

Over half of the student body at Dartmouth is involved in Greek life, and Hanlon has said that he does not plan to abolish fraternities and sororities. However, in an interview with The Dartmouth, he did say that the Greek system “must and will be held to much higher standards and a far greater level of accountability.” 

Reactions to the hard alcohol ban from Dartmouth students have been mixed. Many students do not appreciate the limitations that the ban will impose on the social scene. Other students have expressed doubt that the ban will actually be effective at cutting down on binge drinking and fostering safe and responsible drinking on campus. 

In an article in The New York Times, Dartmouth senior Jake Rascoff expressed his concerns that the ban could make drinking more dangerous on campus.

“It will increase the incidence of surreptitious binge drinking and increase the risk of binge drinking off campus, which will lead to drunk driving,” said Rascoff.

“Ultimately, I think many members of the Greek community were pleased with the thought and care that went into President Hanlon’s address,” wrote Dartmouth senior Chet Brown in an email to the Orient.

He added that the hard alcohol ban will be challenging to implement, but said, “We remain hopeful that a reduction in hard alcohol on campus will ultimately lead to fewer hospital transports and an overall decrease in harmful behaviors.”

In the same New York Times article that Rascoff was quoted in, Brown stressed that an alternative to the hard alcohol ban may well be the abolition of the Greek system at Dartmouth—a possibility which may make students more willing to adhere to the ban.

Not all Greek organizations at Dartmouth were willing to speak on the subject.

Although current Bowdoin students do not have first-hand experience of what it was like before the College’s ban on hard alcohol, students nonetheless have varying views on its effectiveness. 

Ellie Quenzer ’17 acknowledged that the consumption of hard alcohol is still prevalent at Bowdoin, but she did say that the ban does make a lot of people think twice about drinking hard alcohol, as opposed to beer or wine.

“I think that it does deter a lot of people,” said Quenzer.

Head proctor of Osher Hall Will Danforth ’16 said that the policy is not effective at preventing first years from drinking in residence halls. However, Danforth pointed out that the hard alcohol ban is “a piece of a bigger puzzle in terms of other stuff that [the Office of Residential Life] and Peer Health does with regards to helping people be more respectful about drinking in the dorms.”

Both Danforth and Eben Kopp ’17, a member of the Alcohol Team—a campus group that works to educate students about the harmful effects of alcohol—cited the College House system as something that limits dangerous drinking.

“I definitely think that the College Houses help limit dangerous drinking,” said Kopp.

Specifically, Kopp noted that, for first years, College Houses can act as safer alternatives to pregames that often feature the consumption of hard alcohol. Officially, College Houses only offer pre-registered beer or wine that is checked by the Office of Safety and Security.

Bowdoin does have significantly lower numbers of alcohol-related transports than other NESCAC schools. During the 2013-2014 academic year Bowdoin ranked lowest in the number of alcohol-related transports out of NESCAC schools with 15 incidents. The numbers ranged from 15 to 95. 

In an email to the Orient, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster said that a variety of factors may contribute to Bowdoin’s consistently low transport numbers, including the individual responsibility of Bowdoin students and students’ willingness to step in and help their peers in potentially dangerous situations. 

With regards to the hard alcohol ban in particular, Foster noted that since hard alcohol is not used at registered events, mixed drinks like jungle juice do not feature prominently in the social scene. Foster speculated that these sorts of mystery mixed drinks can result in more transports at other schools because they can make it hard for students to know what or how much they are actually drinking. 

The Presidential Search Committee met recently in Boston. Often, this sort of meeting allows the entire committee to meet certain candidates, though Jes Staley ’79, a Bowdoin trustee and chair of the selection committee, would not elaborate on the nature of this specific meeting.

According to Staley, there is not yet a set date for when the next president will be announced. Since President Barry Mills will hold the position until the end of this academic year, Staley said that the committee does not feel any pressure to name a successor by a certain date.

“We have a lot of terrific candidates and we want to be very thorough and very confident with our decision,” said Staley.

“We still have a number of candidates that we are engaged with and talking to,” he added.He did not mention whether the committee has narrowed down the search to a specific number of candidates.

On November 18, Middlebury College chose Laurie L, Patton as its newest president. Patton is a professor of religion and the dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. She will be Middlebury’s first female president. 

“She looks like a great candidate and we’re excited for Middlebury,” said Staley.

He added that the decision would have no bearing on the College’s own selection process.President Mills originally chaired the search committee for his own presidency, but he was asked to step down so that he could be considered for the position himself. Staley would not say whether or not any current committee members are being considered for the position at this time. 

Saturday marked the final meeting of the President’s Visiting Committee (PVC) during President Barry Mills’ time at Bowdoin. This weekend, all previous attendees of the meetings were invited to come to the College to talk with Mills. Between 20 and 25 people made the trip this year.

The PVC was formed in 2003 by Mills for the purpose of discussing various topics on his mind relating to the College. Mills wanted to find a way to engage alumni and parents, who were invested in the College and who he thought would have interesting insight into issues facing Bowdoin.

This year, the PVC primarily discussed the issues involved with the search for the next president of the College. Mills sent the attendees some of the materials that were made available to candidates and asked them what they would do if they were selected as the next president of Bowdoin.

No member of the Presidential Search Committee was in attendance and Mills said that the meeting will have no concrete effect on the presidential search process. However, he maintains that it was a worthwhile exercise.“It was an interesting opportunity for them to think about the future of the College and think about where we’ve been and where we’re headed,” said Mills.

It will be up to the next president to decide whether to continue the PVC or not.

Since 2003, the PVC has met once a year in the fall, with a follow-up conference call in the spring. The committee usually consists of 12 to 15 parents and alumni, and its membership changes from year to year. The College does not pay for the attendees’ transportation—President Mills simply offers an invitation to the people that he would like to talk to.

“I would run into people and know people through my travels and I would find people who I thought were really interesting who I thought would be interesting to put into a room and who could give me good advice,” said Mills with regards to how he chooses who he invites to join the PVC.

According to Mills, people usually spend three years on the committee and then step down, though sometimes parents and alumni continue to attend meetings for more than three consecutive years because they enjoy the opportunity to engage with the College.

“There were a variety of things that must have been on my mind each year on those particular topics and we talked about them and they helped inform me about how I thought about it,” said Mills.

Previous topics of discussion at PVC meetings have included the Bowdoin brand, athletics, the curriculum, the library and whether and to what extent Bowdoin ought to be global.

When Mills first formed the PVC he was interested in the Bowdoin mission statement and what it meant. After discussing it with the PVC, Mills decided that the Offer of the College best summed up the true mission statement of the College and helped differentiate Bowdoin from other schools.

“Those people helped me and gave me the confidence to say that’s what we ought to be doing,” said Mills with regards to pushing for the Offer of the College to be used as a sort of mission statement.

An adapted version of the original Offer of the College, written by William DeWitt Hyde, President of the College from 1885 to 1917, is now displayed prominently on the Bowdoin website and heard around campus.Specific directions for the organization and application of technology at Bowdoin were also discussed at one meeting when many technology experts were present.

Another year the PVC discussed the relevance of the liberal arts.

“It was interesting coming out of that meeting to see that most people really believed that our liberal arts curriculum that we’ve maintained for my entire time here really is what is the touchstone of Bowdoin,” said Mills.

In the election on November 2, Brunswick is slated to have one of the closest State Senate races in recent memory, between Democratic incumbent Stanley Gerzofsky, Green Independent Fred Horch and Republican Jennifer Johnson. 

This election cycle is the first since the State Senate and State House of Representatives district lines were redrawn by Chapter 270 of the Public Laws of 2013. The law was signed by Governor Paul LePage on June 14, 2013. District lines were previously redrawn in 1994 and 2003 to reflect changes in the state’s demographics.

Brunswick is now part of State Senate District 24, which includes North Yarmouth, Pownal, Freeport and Harpswell. State House of Representatives Districts 49 and 50 fall completely within the town of Brunswick. A portion of northwestern Brunswick  will vote in District 51, which also includes West Bath. The College falls in District 50.  

The candidates for the State House of Representatives in District 50 are Republican Mark Holbrook and Democrat Ralph Tucker. There is no incumbent in the election this year, as Charles Priest, the current representative, reached the term limit.

Gerzofsky has served three consecutive terms in the Maine State Senate, beginning to 2008. He served in the Maine House of Representatives from 2000 to 2008. 

In 2013, Gerzofsky served as the Chair of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee and on the State and Local Government Committee. Much of the legislation that Gerzofsky has introduced has been centered around issues of criminal justice.

According to the Maine State Democrats website, Gerzofsky’s main areas of interest, with regards to policy, are civil liberties and public safety.  

He has voiced his opposition to the tax cuts implemented by the LePage administration, saying that they favored the wealthy. He has also come out in support of raising the minimum wage as long as the relative living conditions in different parts of the state were taken into account. 

Gerzofsky attended the Maine Justice Academy and Pasadena City College. He has worked as a consultant and owned a furniture store from 1965 to 1995.

Horch has a background in business and law and was trained as an attorney. According to his website, his platform focuses on healthcare and social needs, jobs and economic development, state budget and taxes—including having the wealthiest citizens “pay their fair share,”—environment and sustainability, and civil rights and social justice.

In 2010 and 2012, Horch ran as the Green Independent Party candidate for the Maine House of Representatives. 

Horch plans to advocate strongly for renewable energy. He owned and operated F.W. Horch Sustainable Goods and Supplies on Maine Street from 2006 to 2011, before selling it to new owners. 

According to Horch, “[addressing renewable energy] needs to be focused around how you can harness green energy.”

He cites solar and hydroelectric power as some of the potential forms that green energy in Maine could take.

Jennifer Johnson is a single mother of two boys and an owner of Johnson’s Sporting Goods, located in Cook’s Corner. 

According to her website, Johnson’s major concerns are establishing reasonable taxation levels—particularly for small businesses like hers—protecting Second Amendment rights, shying away from big government, and family concerns. 

In previous public forums with her fellow candidates, Johnson has contended that the current welfare system in Maine is broken. She advocates cutting down on fraud and abuse. She has also spoken out against raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, saying that it could prevent businesses from hiring.

Holbrook originally did not want to run for the House, but was encouraged to do so at a Brunswick Republican Town Committee meeting so that Democrat Ralph Tucker would not run uncontested. Holbrook spent two years working behind the scenes on Republican campaigns in Brunswick before this election. 

He did not officially commit himself to the race until Labor Day weekend, but said that he has been  encouraged by the support that he  has received from townsfolk from voters.“It’s humbling to have people donate,” said Holbrook.

Holbrook’s platform is characterized by three main priorities: family, faith and farms and fisheries. He advocates smaller government, lower taxes and welfare reform and does not support the Affordable Care Act. 

“I would like to see a greater opportunity for faith-based organizations to be a part of the delivery of social services,” Holbrook said, while also acknowledging the importance of the separation of church and state.

Holbrook also advocates the empowerment of women through personal safety training courses, which he has been teaching since 1996. He says that he would like to see such classes made available on college campuses.

“I have a real concern about empowering women and how to do that to prevent them from becoming targets,” said Holbrook. 

Holbrook has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and runs a counseling practice. In addition, he acts as a trainer and consultant for police departments and as an instructor at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy.

Ralph Tucker is a retired Maine District Court judge. He previously presided over courts in Wiscasset and West Bath. Tucker has also served on the Brunswick Town Council and was appointed to the workers’ compensation board by Governors Brennan and McKernan, spending seven of his 11 years on the board as chair. Tucker was a lawyer and partner with McTeague Higbee Law Firm for 18 years before running for public office. 

Tucker currently has two young granddaughters growing up in Brunswick. He identifies them and their future as a major motivation for his run for office.

Tucker’s main political concerns, according to his website, are maintaining good public schools, strengthening environmental safeguards, and advocating for health care coverage, fair taxes, and environmental growth. He also emphasizes maintaining civility in public debate. 

The CampusFoodTrucks (CFT) Kickstarter campaign has been online for just over two weeks and has raised $4,296 thus far, $7,704  short of the money needed to keep the food truck operational. 

Ten days away from its May 12 deadline, 55 backers have pledged donations so far. The largest amount pledged is $300 from one backer. 

Though the average pledge is $76.71,  the majority of backers have pledged $20 or $30.

According to Steve Borukhin ’14, one of the founders of CFT, support for the Kickstarter campaign has come from a variety of sources, including students, family members and friends of the operators, as well as employees of the College.

Reade Brower P ’13 is not the owner of the truck, as was stated in a previous Orient article, but had lent Mike Smallidge—a restaurant owner based in Bar Harbor—the money to buy the truck a number of years ago. Smallidge used the truck for a summer and then agreed to lend it to CFT for their first year of operations. They worked out an agreeable rent deal for the following years, according to Brower. 

Smallidge plans to put the truck to use in the future if CFT cannot afford to buy it outright by the end of the Kickstarter campaign.

In the online comment section of the Orient’s April 18 article about the CFT Kickstarter, Brower offered to match donations of $200 with a donation of $100 from himself—up to $500. 

“I’m just trying to encourage other people, if they can afford it, to donate in a little bit of a more substantial way,” said Brower.

In his comment Brower asked the people who are inspired to pledge $200 because of his promise to post a comment about why they decided to support CFT. 

Shaun Hogan, an explosive detection dog handler at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq—who used to work as a security officer at the College and plans to return after the completion of his contract—posted in the thread promising to donate $200 in response to Brower’s offer.

Isaac Brower ’13, son of Reade Brower and one of the original founders of CFT, also posted in the thread promising a donation of $200 with Reade Brower’s matching $100. 

Three other people have pledged $200, but have not posted in the thread. 

The student operators of CampusFoodTrucks (CFT) launched a Kickstarter campaign on Wednesday to try to raise $12,000 in order to buy the truck outright and stay in business.

If they do not reach their goal by May 12, it is likely that the food truck will close after this spring, the third year that the food truck has been in operation.

CFT is owned by Lee “Monty” Barker ’16, Ben Citrin ’16, Steve Borukhin ’14 and Eric Edelman ’13, but they rent the actual truck from Reade Brower P’13, its Rockland, Maine-based owner.

They currently pay $400 a month, which is covered by revenue from food sales.

However, as of mid-April, Brower has decided to sell the truck for $10,000, giving priority to CFT until the middle of May.

The Orient was unable to speak with Brower before print time about his motivations for selling.

The four owners of CFT, which sits in the Dayton parking lot behind Smith Union, attempted to winterize the food truck during the fall, but were unable to get it ready for the winter due to a fryer malfunction.

They have not been able to find a different, cheaper truck to buy in the area.

In an email to the Orient, Isaac Brower ’13, one of the original CFT founders and son of the truck’s owner, said that they did not face any financial issues while he was at Bowdoin.

The owners said that they had considered trying to buy the truck outright in the past, but the setback this winter made that impossible without outside help.

The College treats the CFT as an outside contractor and does not have an official relationship with the business beyond allowing it to operate on campus.

According to Director of Student Life and the Smith Union Allen Delong, the College will not help them cover the costs of buying the truck.

“We wish them luck, but they are entrepreneurs. They have beaten the odds so far, there is no doubt in my mind that they will beat the odds this time, but this is just another part of running a business,” said Delong, who acts as the administrative point person between CFT and the College.

The students have turned to Kickstarter in the hopes that fans and patrons of the food truck will help ensure its existence for years to come.

The Kickstarter campaign went up on the website on April 16 and the deadline for donations is May 12.

The Kickstarter goal of $12,000 includes $10,000 to buy the truck, and $2,000 for needed repairs.

As of the press time, the Kickstarter has 11 backers and has raised $450.

Kickstarter only collects the money from people who have pledged to donate once the goal of $12,000 is reached.

“I definitely support it. I would throw $10 or $15 towards it because there is really nothing to eat after Super Snacks and that’s annoying,” said Connor Moore ’17 of the Kickstarter.

Jacob Russell ’17 also spoke to the lack of alternatives for late night campus snacking, noting that he would also be willing to chip in $10 or $15.

“They’re doing God’s work,” Russell added.

The owners of CFT have offered up a variety of perks in exchange for various tiers of donations.

These prizes range from one free menu item and a CFT bumper sticker for a $20 pledge, to having an existing burger named after whoever pledges $200.

A pledge of $1,000 can get you one free menu item per night, while a pledge $2,500 guarantees you the opportunity to design  CFT uniforms.

“We’re hoping that we’ll get a lot of donations from a lot of people at Bowdoin because we figure there have to be hundreds of people here that use the food truck, that know what the food truck is and would be willing to put in five or 10 to make sure that it’s around for next year,” said Barker.

Advocates and municipal leaders offered ideas for the potential expansion of train service in Maine at a public hearing about the 20-year plan for Amtrak’s rail service on March 19. Amtrak has been entertaining the idea of expanding its Downeaster service north to Auburn, Augusta, Bangor and Montreal and improving passage south to New York City by having the train go through Worcester, Mass. instead of Boston.

However, Patricia Quinn, the executive director for Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, stressed that current rail services would be improved before any new extensions would be undertaken.

“The primary concerns for the Downeaster are to strengthen service that we already have,” said Quinn. 

At this point, there are no concrete plans or timeframe for the expansion, according to Quinn.Amtrak hopes to shorten the current travel time from Brunswick to Boston by improving the quality of track, specifically the track between Portland and Boston.

Currently there are only two trains that run from Brunswick to Boston, but Quinn said that her office would like to see that number increase to five.

According to Quinn, Amtrak would like to allow trains to layover in Brunswick. This would mean that a train could head to Boston around noon and then another train could return to Brunswick sometime after midnight, spending the night in Brunswick. Quinn said these added services could make it easier for Mainers to go to Boston for evening activities like Red Sox games and return home the same night.

The success of the Brunswick station has encouraged more rail expansion in Maine. Quinn’s office initially expected around 100 people north of Portland to ride the train each day, but the average has been closer to 150 per day.

“College students are a large and very important market for us,” said Quinn, though she acknowledged that none of the potential improvements are geared specifically towards students.“I think it would be epic if I could go all the way up through Maine on the Amtrak because I love the Amtrak,” said Westly Garcia ’17.

Garcia added that he would also like to see more southbound trains, especially because that would make scheduling flights out of Boston much easier. 

Most of the funding for rail expansion and improvement comes from the federal government. The layover project for Brunswick is currently the only funded project and Quinn’s office is still waiting on confirmation from the Federal Railroad Administration.

The Planning Board for the Town of Brunswick gave Bowdoin an initial approval to build a new three-story office building at 216 Maine Street and final approval to convert the former Stevens Retirement Home on Harpswell Road into chem-free student housing. 

At the meeting Tuesday night, the board was unanimous in its support for the office’s 3,440-square-foot sketch plan. It will revisit the plan for final approval on March 25.

The College’s projected budget is $3.2 million, with $2.4 million in construction costs. The building will be silver LEED-certified, but will not be carbon neutral or “net-zero,” according to Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer Katy Longley. After acquiring the Maine Street office building in 2007, the College used it to house a digital media lab and visual art rooms before the Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance opened for use in Fall 2013.

“When we had to vacate people from McLellan to new offices we thought it would be a good place to build a modest administrative office,” said Longley.

In 2011 the College exchanged the McLellan Building with the town as part of the purchase of the Longfellow School, now the Edwards Center for Art and Dance.

The College maintains a 10-year lease on the third floor of the McLellan Building. The staff that used to work on the first two floors will move into the new building upon its completion.

The town’s renovation of the former McLellan Building is scheduled to be completed in November, with staff moving in after Thanksgiving break. 

The College’s new building would house about 30 employees of the Controller’s Office, the Office of Student Aid and the Human Resources Department. 

A small number of parking spaces will be added to the back of the building. Staff will also be able to park at the spots at the nearby McLellan Building. The College House parking spaces on Maine Street that are being converted to visitor and staff parking will also be available to the 30 employees in the new building.

The Planning Board’s final approval of the renovations to the former the retirement home at 52 Harpswell Road means the project will continue on schedule. The building—acquired in June 2013—will provide chem-free housing for 35 upperclassmen students in both single and double rooms. 

Renovations are scheduled to begin in March and be completed by August, in time for students to move in for the 2014-2015 academic year. The project budget is currently $1.9 million.

Longley said that the building was chosen to be turned into new student housing because of its location near the College and because it already had rooms that could easily be converted into dorm rooms. 

“It’s in really good shape inside so we were excited about using that for student housing,” Longley said.

The decision to make it chem-free came from the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs; Longley cited noise concerns for the neighbors as one of the considered factors. 

The College plans to add a new organic garden in the backyard, to be certified by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. The building will be LEED certified, with high efficiency heating, LED lighting, low flow bathroom fixtures, and other environmentally friendly renovations. A lighted path will lead from Farley Field House to the building.

The Planning Board for the Town of Brunswick gave Bowdoin an initial approval to build a new three-story office building at 216 Maine Street and final approval to convert the former Stevens Retirement Home on Harpswell Road into chem-free student housing. 

At the meeting Tuesday night, the board was unanimous in its support for the office’s 3,440-square-foot sketch plan. It will revisit the plan for final approval on March 25.

The College’s projected budget is $3.2 million, with $2.4 million in construction costs. The building will be silver LEED-certified, but will not be carbon neutral or “net-zero,” according to Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer Katy Longley. After acquiring the Maine Street office building in 2007, the College used it to house a digital media lab and visual art rooms before the Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance opened for use in Fall 2013.

“When we had to vacate people from McLellan to new offices we thought it would be a good place to build a modest administrative office,” said Longley.

In 2011 the College exchanged the McLellan Building with the town as part of the purchase of the Longfellow School, now the Edwards Center for Art and Dance.

The College maintains a 10-year lease on the third floor of the McLellan Building. The staff that used to work on the first two floors will move into the new building upon its completion.

The College's construction of the 216 Maine Street building is scheduled to be completed in November, with staff moving in after Thanksgiving break. 

The College’s new building would house about 30 employees of the Controller’s Office, the Office of Student Aid and the Human Resources Department. 

A small number of parking spaces will be added to the back of the building. Staff will also be able to park at the spots at the nearby McLellan Building. The College House parking spaces on Maine Street that are being converted to visitor and staff parking will also be available to the 30 employees in the new building.

The Planning Board’s final approval of the renovations to the former the retirement home at 52 Harpswell Road means the project will continue on schedule. The building—acquired in June 2013—will provide chem-free housing for 35 upperclassmen students in both single and double rooms. 

Renovations are scheduled to begin in March and be completed by August, in time for students to move in for the 2014-2015 academic year. The project budget is currently $1.9 million.

Longley said that the building was chosen to be turned into new student housing because of its location near the College and because it already had rooms that could easily be converted into dorm rooms. 

“It’s in really good shape inside so we were excited about using that for student housing,” Longley said.

The decision to make it chem-free came from the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs; Longley cited noise concerns for the neighbors as one of the considered factors. 

The College plans to add a new organic garden in the backyard, to be certified by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. The building will be LEED certified, with high efficiency heating, LED lighting, low flow bathroom fixtures, and other environmentally friendly renovations. A lighted path will lead from Coffin Parking Lot to the building.

Correction, February 28, 1:10 p.m.: The print edition inaccurately stated that the former Mclellan building will be  completed in November, with staff moving in after Thanksgiving break—the online edition has been corrected to show that that is instead the timeline for the College's new 216 Maine Street building. Additionally, the lighted path will lead from Coffin Parking Lot to the new dorm, not from Farley Field House. 

Last fall, students racked up $8,374 worth of damage to campus residence buildings, a 63 percent decrease from the $22,887 incurred last spring. 

With $2,665 in charges last semester, Baxter House once again sustained the most expensive residence hall damages. Brunswick Apartments had the second highest cost for the fall semester with just over $1,000 worth of damage, and Ladd House had the third highest final cost of $849. 

The majority of Ladd House’s costs came from a chandelier smashed by a student during the celebration for the field hockey team after its National Championship victory. 

A total of 630 parking tickets were issues by Bowdon security between September 1 and October 21, a 61.5 percent increase from the same timeframe last year. 

The vast majority of citations and warnings are given to student cars parked in faculty and staff or visitor lots. 

Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols says that this rise in citations and warnings is not an accident.